Notes on the data: Income support

People receiving an unemployment benefit for less than 6 months and 6 months or more, June 2023

Policy context: Long-term jobless people are much more likely than employed people or short-term unemployed people to have low education and skill levels, a chronic illness or disability, to live in a region of high unemployment, and to have an unstable employment history [1]. Increasing casualisation of the work force and decreasing numbers of full-time jobs for low skilled workers have contributed to the difficulties of many who have been unemployed for longer than 6 months (180 days or more).

Long-term unemployment can have negative effects on health and wellbeing, especially on the emotional and mental health of those who are unemployed and their families [2,3].

References

Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS). Measuring long term unemployment in Australia. (ACOSS Information Paper 379). Strawberry Hills, NSW: ACOSS; 2005
Dollard MF, Winefield AH. Mental health: overemployment, underemployment, unemployment and healthy jobs. Aust e-J Adv Mental Hlth. 2002;1(3).
Gray M, Taylor M, Edwards B. Unemployment and the wellbeing of children aged 5-10 years. Aust. J Labour Econ. 2011;14(2):153-72.

Notes: People receiving an ‘unemployment benefit' - which includes JobSeeker Payment and Youth Allowance (other)¹ by the Department of Human Services (Centrelink) - for less than 180 days or 180 days or more (approximately 6 months) are shown as a proportion of the eligible population (of persons aged 16 to 64 years).

A very small number of Local Government Areas (LGAs) have proportions, for the long-term series , in excess of 100%: these are clearly not accurate. The reason for this is not clear, although it may be the result of the address of the beneficiary not being allocated to the correct small geographical area by the correspondence files available; it may also reflect inaccuracies in the denominator (the population), as population estimates at the small area level for age groups can be unreliable, in particular for areas with proportionately high numbers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people (as is the case for this income support payment). It also indicates that it is possible that percentages of less than 100% may also be overstated.

Population Health Area (PHA) data were derived from publicly-available data that were already suppressed at the Statistical Area Level 2 (SA2). Therefore, if a PHA included an SA2 with suppressed data, there could be an undercount in the PHA. However, the loss of counts due to the use of this data set was negligible (0.01% lost). As State and Territory totals were also provided, data in the ‘Unknown’ data row in the Excel data workbooks are calculated as the difference between the sum of the PHA data and the State/Territory totals; these figures therefore include the sum of the suppressed SA2 cells.

Data cells with less than 5 counts were suppressed (confidentialised).

¹ Youth Allowance (other) is largely comprised of unemployed people aged 16 to 21 looking for full-time work or undertaking approved activities, such as part-time study or training. It excludes Youth Allowance customers who are full-time students or undertaking an apprenticeship/ traineeship.

Geography: Data available by Population Health Area, Local Government Area, Primary Health Network, Quintile of socioeconomic disadvantage of area and Quintiles within PHNs, and Remoteness Area

Numerator: People in receipt of a JobStart Payment or Youth Allowance (other) from the Department of Human Services (Centrelink) for less than 180 days and 180 days or more (approximately 6 months)

Denominator: People aged 16 to 64 years at 30 June 2022 (population data at June 2023 not available at time of publication)

Detail of analysis: Per cent

Source: Compiled by PHIDU based on data from DSS Payment Demographic Data, June 2023, available from https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/dss-payment-demographic-data, accessed 20 December 2023 for PHAs and data supplied by the Department of Social Services, June 2023 for LGAs; and Australian Bureau of Statistics Estimated Resident Population, 30 June 2022.